Dedicated server vs VPS: when the server is actually cheaper

A VPS looks cheaper on the pricing page. Five dollars a month, ten dollars a month, and you are online. For a small site that is the right call. The question is what happens as the project grows, because VPS prices climb a lot faster than the hardware you get.

What you are really renting

A VPS is a slice of a bigger machine. The host decides how many slices to sell, and you share the CPU, the disks and the network port with everyone else on that box. When a neighbor runs a backup or gets a traffic spike, your site slows down and there is nothing you can do about it.

A dedicated server is the whole machine. Every core, every gigabyte of RAM and every drive belongs to you. Nobody else is on it.

Where the prices cross

Look at what 8 dedicated vCPUs and 32 GB of RAM cost from the big cloud providers. It is usually well over $150 a month before storage and bandwidth. A real eight-core server with 32 GB of RAM often costs half that, and much less when it is marked down.

The catch with cloud pricing is the extras:

• Block storage is billed per gigabyte, every month.
• Bandwidth out of the cloud is billed per gigabyte too, and it adds up fast for media or downloads.
• "Shared" vCPUs can be throttled when you use them hard for long.

A dedicated server has one monthly price. The traffic allowance or unmetered port is listed up front, and the disks are included.

When a VPS still wins

Stay on a VPS if your project is small, if traffic swings wildly from hour to hour, or if you need to spin up and tear down machines several times a day. That flexibility is what you are paying for.

Move to a dedicated server when the load is steady, when you have hit the point of paying for a bigger VPS plan every few months, or when you notice performance changing for no reason. Databases, busy online stores, game servers and build servers are the usual candidates.

How to shop for the switch

Start with the RAM you use today and double it. Then pick the city closest to your users and sort by price. A four-core machine with 16 or 32 GB is plenty for most people leaving a VPS, and those sit in the cheapest aisle.

If you find a marked-down machine with more cores than you planned for, take it. Spare capacity on a dedicated server costs nothing extra next month, and it is the reason you are switching in the first place.